28 December, 2012
12 December, 2012
11 December, 2012
10 December, 2012
09 December, 2012
THE future of Victoria's troubled online education network is in doubt, with many schools refusing to use it amid complaints it is clunky and outdated and the security wall does not provide a real-life cyber environment. The $99 million ultranet, an online portal that was supposed to connect teachers, parents and students at state schools, has been dogged by cost blowouts, technical glitches and opposition from teachers.
08 December, 2012
Medical computer graphics could be seen as the invisible side of VFX. We tend to associate CGI with spaceships, fantasy or history, but in many ways medical imaging is the forefather of all computer graphics. When Steve Jobs bought the team at Pixar from George Lucas, he wanted them to make computers for high-end visualisation such as medical imaging – the animations that Pixar made were just to showcase the hardware.
Public wi-fi hotspots are increasingly common. Cafes, fast food chains, airports and even buses and trains offer them as a free service. A recent study conducted by McAfee found that nearly two-thirds of the surveyed Australians used free wi-fi. But just because there's free wi-fi at a trusted establishment, there's no guarantee it's safe to use.
06 December, 2012
The research into parents' influence over children's learning has found parents possibly even more so than teachers are key to success.
Mums and dads don't need to understand calculus to get the best from their child. Taking an active interest and facilitating a love of learning is what kids need most.
The improved results included higher grades, making advanced classes, lower dropout rates and greater likelihood of tertiary study.
Schools with strong family involvement were four times more likely to improve student reading and 10 times more likely to improve maths results.
Volunteering at school had little impact, and simply demanding high achievement can instead damage a child's self-esteem and their marks.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/involved-parents-key-to-learning-success/story-e6frea83-1226530751415
05 December, 2012
03 December, 2012
01 December, 2012
30 November, 2012
Microsoft Security Essentials loses AV-Test certificate.
Bitdefender Internet Security is the winner with 17 out of 18 points. F-Secure Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security came in second and third respectively with 15,5 and 15,0 points. Out of the free programs, ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall got the highest score with 14,5 points.
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-security-essentials-loses-av-test-certificate
29 November, 2012
28 November, 2012
27 November, 2012
26 November, 2012
Windows 8 sales flounder as critics pan clumsy interface
"The main user interface restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed 'Microsoft Window' "
Flat icons reduce discoverability
Very low information density on Windows 8 apps
Live tiles turned start screen into “incessantly blinking, unruly environment that feels like dozens of carnival barkers yelling at you simultaneously”
Error-prone gestures"
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/windows-8-sales-flounder-as-critics-pan-clumsy-interface-20121126-2a2d0.html#ixzz2DIE8slav
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/windows-8-sales-flounder-as-critics-pan-clumsy-interface-20121126-2a2d0.html
23 November, 2012
20 November, 2012
15 November, 2012
Apple is sending notices to several developers asking them to remove or rename Apps that have 'Memory' in their titles. The notices are coming at the request of German company Ravensburger, which claims to hold trademark for the word in several European countries, where it sells a very popular board game simply titled "Memory."
High-speed LTE networks could be felled by a $650 piece of gear, says a new study. Any radio frequency can be blocked, or “jammed,” if a transmitter sends a signal at the same frequency, with enough power. But LTE turns out to be especially vulnerable, Reed’s group says. That is because the whole LTE signal depends on control instructions that make up less than 1 percent of the overall signal.
14 November, 2012
13 November, 2012
They were born in the digital age but young Australians continue to give a collective thumbs down to a career in the industry that brought them iPhones and Facebook. Figures from the Australian Computer Society to be released on Tuesday show the number of domestic students graduating from information and communications technology courses has halved over the past decade; down from 9093 in 2003 to an expected 4547 this year.
A prototype app made for the iPhone 4 allows users to type on a keyboard made of paper using vibrations. Created by Florian Kräutli, a university student in London, the "Vibrative" app makes use of the iPhone's inbuilt accelerometer, reading vibrations as a finger taps a surface to work out which key is being pressed.
12 November, 2012
Facebook, Google, Twitter and the various apps and websites we use generate a phenomenal amount of information about how we live our lives, what we buy, what we wish we could buy, and where we go. Type "Facebook Report" into Wolfram Alpha, give it access to your data, and it will tell you who you are.
09 November, 2012
08 November, 2012
05 November, 2012
01 November, 2012
Windows 8 can run on Apple Macs, there are at least four different ways. There are two commercial programs that will do the job. Parallels from the Swiss company of the same name and Fusion from VMware of the US along with a couple of freebies: Boot Camp from Apple and the open-source Virtual Box from Oracle.
31 October, 2012
30 October, 2012
There’s a fast-growing trend in the corporate world to replace human bias with algorithmic precision during the hiring process. In addition to an interview – or even during pre-interview screening – hopeful applicants are completing questionnaires. But unlike similar questionnaires of the past, it’s the computer that looks at the answers and decides whether or not the applicant has got what the company is looking for.
In software, skeuomorphism can be traced back to the visual metaphors designers created to translate on-screen applications before users were accustomed to interacting with computer software: virtual folders to store your documents, virtual Rolodexes to store contacts. But over time, skeuomorphism has seeped into all areas of UI design, especially in Apple’s software, where text documents, for example, are made to look like yellow legal pads.
29 October, 2012
Launching the white paper Australia in the Asian Century yesterday, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said the curriculum changes would be compulsory in return for state and territory governments and private school organisations receiving Commonwealth funding for education which was soon to be boosted.The white paper recommendation, adopted by the government, says every child must have the opportunity to learn one of Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian and every school must be linked to a school in Asia to support the teaching process. In some instances this would require the national broadband network.
27 October, 2012
Students play 'Skyrim' for class (part of a growing number of college instructors who are incorporating games into university-level course work. For example, at Wabash College in Indiana, "Portal" was made required "reading" for all students. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft has been used at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania as part of the intelligence studies program. And at the University of Texas at Brownsville, one instructor has used PlayStation 3 video games to teach physics)
26 October, 2012
25 October, 2012
24 October, 2012
23 October, 2012
22 October, 2012
21 October, 2012
19 October, 2012
Google Stays Ahead of Silicon Valley Pack on Engineer Salaries (According to the study, Google software engineers earn an average base salary of $128,336, ahead of Facebook’s $123,626. Apple Inc. registered at $114,413 this year, the study says, while eBay Inc. pays $108,809 and Zynga Inc. stands at $105,568)
In the US, Samsung owes Apple more than $US1 billion, but in the UK, Apple owes Samsung a public apology, with claims that that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple's registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art.
18 October, 2012
The Pirate Bay has made an important change to its infrastructure. The world’s most famous BitTorrent site has switched its entire operation to the cloud. From now on The Pirate Bay will serve its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world. The move will cut costs, ensure better uptime, and make the site virtually invulnerable to police raids
17 October, 2012
16 October, 2012
15 October, 2012
12 October, 2012
11 October, 2012
10 October, 2012
09 October, 2012
08 October, 2012
07 October, 2012
22 September, 2012
21 September, 2012
20 September, 2012
The fight over mobile maps is on. Google plans to add new features to its Google Maps app for Android phones on Wednesday. Conveniently, it is the same day that Apple‘s latest mobile operating system is due to be released, the one that kicks Google’s maps off the iPhone and replaces them with Apple’s own mobile maps. But what about iPhone users? For now, they can access Google Maps on their mobile Web browser.
19 September, 2012
18 September, 2012
Australian ICT curriculum at crossroads
The national curriculum appears to do nothing useful for ICT as a subject with a concentration on ICT literacy.
This is essential but it is not the same thing as studying ICT as a subject in its own right. The difference is simplest to explain by analogy. Reading (the original meaning of literacy) is a skill that is essential to enable any level of progress in most subjects in our educational system.
Everyone supports teaching people to read. It is not the same, however, as studying English literature as a subject. Similarly it is essential to teach everyone how to use ICT. This is required to study most subjects effectively, but not everyone will want to study ICT as a subject at school.
By failing to make this distinction, we do a great disservice to those who might make ICT their chosen career.
Britain has chosen a different approach, with Education Minister Michael Gove abolishing the existing ICT curriculum in schools and seeking help to develop content for the subject.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/opinion/ict-curriculum-needs-overhaul/story-e6frgb0o-1226471356733
17 September, 2012
14 September, 2012
The iPhone 5 offers a far more expanded selection of network connectivity options, as long as you get the US/Japan A1429 model (as opposed to A1428) and use a network that offers nano-SIMs. For regular globetrotters, Model A1429 is the clear winner with support for GSM, UMTS with HSPA+, CDMA2000, and Asia-Pacific LTE support with limited European LTE support.
13 September, 2012
12 September, 2012
11 September, 2012
10 September, 2012
08 September, 2012
07 September, 2012
05 September, 2012
04 September, 2012
02 September, 2012
31 August, 2012
30 August, 2012
29 August, 2012
28 August, 2012
27 August, 2012
The final part of the Quantum Computer experiment implemented the Shor factoring algorithm using 15 as the value to be factored. In 150,000 runs of the calculation, the chip gave the correct result 48% of the time. As Shor's algorithm is only supposed to give the correct answer 50% of the time, this is a good result
25 August, 2012
24 August, 2012
23 August, 2012
22 August, 2012
21 August, 2012
20 August, 2012
17 August, 2012
16 August, 2012
15 August, 2012
14 August, 2012
13 August, 2012
12 August, 2012
10 August, 2012
09 August, 2012
Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the first set of Software titles are heading to Steam, marking a major expansion to the platform most commonly known as a leading destination for PC and Mac games.
08 August, 2012
07 August, 2012
06 August, 2012
02 August, 2012
01 August, 2012
31 July, 2012
30 July, 2012
27 July, 2012
DIY App making tools/sites
(http://www.economist.com/node/21559366):
http://gamesalad.com/creator
http://mobile.conduit.com/Features.aspx
http://www.appmakr.com/
AI playing poker. Chess and checkers are examples of deterministic games with perfect information: Players know the exact state of the game at any time and the future state resulting from taking a legal action. Poker, on the other hand, is a stochastic game with imperfect information because card deals are random and players do not see the private cards held by the other players.
26 July, 2012
24 July, 2012
In a submission to a government review of the legislation's efficiency, NZ FACT claimed New Zealanders illegally viewed movies in the top 200 online 110,000 times in August last year — the month before the new law took effect — but only 50,000 times in September, despite the drop in the first month, NZ FACT noted there had been no “discernible progress” since then
23 July, 2012
20 July, 2012
19 July, 2012
18 July, 2012
As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, has announced that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In acouple of months, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally
17 July, 2012
16 July, 2012
28 June, 2012
27 June, 2012
26 June, 2012
Google vs. Microsoft: A tale of two interviews
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/281266/google-vs-microsoft-tale-two-interviews
25 June, 2012
22 June, 2012
21 June, 2012
20 June, 2012
19 June, 2012
15 June, 2012
14 June, 2012
13 June, 2012
12 June, 2012
08 June, 2012
07 June, 2012
06 June, 2012
05 June, 2012
04 June, 2012
03 June, 2012
01 June, 2012
31 May, 2012
29 May, 2012
28 May, 2012
26 May, 2012
24 May, 2012
23 May, 2012
22 May, 2012
21 May, 2012
18 May, 2012
17 May, 2012
16 May, 2012
15 May, 2012
14 May, 2012
11 May, 2012
10 May, 2012
09 May, 2012
07 May, 2012
06 May, 2012
04 May, 2012
02 May, 2012
01 May, 2012
30 April, 2012
27 April, 2012
26 April, 2012
25 April, 2012
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